Monday, April 21, 2008

It Just Makes Good Sense by Joel and Andrea

Timing is everything. A couple of weeks ago, I got a well-timed email message about design from Joel Pattison. His message was right on and parallel to a recent decision by the Mason School of Business. Joel wrote:

It seems it has been a "W&M tradition" to let a design grow very old and stale and then replace it with something that looks radically different. In my opinion, well executed web design is actually a series of natural evolutions that keep a site looking fresh -- each iteration of the design should build on the previous version and pave the way for future versions.

What Joel described in his gem of an email is actually underway at W&M's Mason School of Business. What makes sense to Joel makes sense to Andrea too. Working with mStoner and the re.web project team, Andrea Sardone, Mason's Director of Marketing Communications, is planning for the natural evolution of their site. In early 2009, our business school will open a new building and do what make sense for mason.wm.edu.

1 comment:

Andrea Sardone
said...

I've been either building, managing, or developing content for websites for about 15 years and I admit I have never finished one. Oh believe me, I've been "done" with websites alright, but never finished. And that's the point of websites. They're never "done." At least the good ones aren't. The Mason School launched its current site in 2006. The opportunity to become part of re.web came at the right time for a lot of reasons. And one of the biggest reasons was that it was time. What we planned three years ago and built now needs to evolve again. Our website is our primary marketing platform and evolving our website makes good business sense for us. Web users are extremely sophisticated now and if they're looking at W&M, we know they're really smart, too. They'll sniff out old design and stale content immediately. Evolution is indeed the name of the game.